


pull me under

by nekrateholic



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 13:00:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6659035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nekrateholic/pseuds/nekrateholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dalton wakes up and it’s dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pull me under

**Author's Note:**

> AU. I have no idea how to tag this. There's offscreen character death, I guess? I tried for creepy but it ended up just gross (only in the beginning though??). If you've seen Criminal Minds imagine the old lady as Antonia from the last episode.  
> this was inspired by my roommate's dream (the dream was way scarier, poor thing)  
> also, i love Mina.

Dalton wakes up and it’s dark. Not the dark when you wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, too. It’s also not-his-bed. His bed isn’t sticky and doesn’t make weird crunchy noises whenever he moves. And then there’s the smell. He slowly tries to stretch his left hand, then the right, but both actions get the same result – his hands hit something solid long before they reach their full width. Breathe, he tells himself – through the smell, through the slowly building panic, through the weird feeling he’s lying on something that might or might not have been some _one_ at some point (or is that just his imagination?). He tries to think about the last thing he remembers before waking up in a freaking box on top of what might just be a very much dead, decaying person but the panic isn’t building quite so slow now and out, out, out, he wants out and oh hey, there’s the claustrophobia as well. That’s not the moment he starts screaming though. That happens when something definitely not belonging to his anatomy starts tickling its way up his arm.

Then a pair of arms – too bony to be real – wraps around him, pulling him down and finally, mercifully, the panic kicks in full gear and he blacks out again.

***

‘Hi.’

  
This time, when Dalton wakes up it’s not quite so dark. He’s leaning against some kind of a wall and there’s a fire flickering a few feet from him. It looks like he’s in a cave of some sort. The voice is coming from a boy that’s leaning against the opposite wall. He’s thin, his hair is sticking up in every direction and his glasses are cute. There’s a far more pressing matter on Dalton’s mind now, though.

‘Where am I?’

The boy scrunches up his nose like he just tasted something foul (it’s adorable). ‘The underworld? Sort of? I think I’m your coping mechanism or something.’

  
‘My… What?’ Dalton waits for further explanation but the boy just pokes the fire with a stick that eventually catches fire and he leaves it there. Eventually he continues.

‘It’s either here or in that coffin where you’d panic and waste your oxygen way faster than necessary. You’ll need it later.’ The pause this time isn’t nearly as long. ‘What do you remember last? I mean, before the coffin.’

Dalton thinks about it. With all the weird things happening right now his real life seems like a dream, a magical place that doesn’t really exist.  
‘I ran away from home.’ It comes back to him, now that he isn’t alone in a tiny dark place, lying on top of a corpse. ‘I went to this old lady’s home – a friend told me she takes in runaways sometimes – temporarily, until they get to their feet. She fed me, gave me a room and everything. She was really nice.’ She was really nice, until she wasn’t. She would get mad over the smallest things. Then the punishments started. There was this one time when he spilled a glass of orange juice during dinner. She said nothing, got up and shoved his head in a plate of curry. Dalton didn’t say any of this aloud but the boy was looking at him like he already knew.

‘Were you alone?’

‘No.’ There was a girl. Dalton thought she was the old lady’s daughter at the time but now he wasn’t so sure.

‘Lily,’ the boy said. It should’ve been more of a surprise, really, that he knew Lily’s name but he seemed to already know everything else – and it was the perfect opportunity for Dalton to ask some of his own questions. The first of them being-  
‘Who are you?’

There was another long pause before he answered. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t expect you to know my face since you were, you know, lying on top of my dead body. My name is Mackenzie, by the way.’ Another thing that should’ve surprised D more than it did. ‘Lily was there when I was at her house, too. She ratted me out when I decided to run away. I suppose she did it to you too, by the look on your face. Don’t hold it against her. She’s been there longer than both of us, it’s probably a survival instinct by now.’ Mackenzie poked the fire again. ‘I know it’s selfish, but I kind of wish you didn’t make it out alive. It gets so lonely here.’

Dalton doesn’t have to answer that because the walls of the cave start rattling and Mackenzie gives him a sad smile. ‘That’s your rescue party, I guess. Wake up, D. Wake up, scream, make them find you. Live for both of us.’

***

Dalton wakes up. It’s dark again but there’s a lot more noise outside now.  
He screams.

**Author's Note:**

> i wish i had the attention span to make this into more than a drabble.  
> i don't, so here's a drabble.


End file.
